State Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the Republican candidate running for the special election in Massachusetts next week, has been campaigning for the last several days telling crowds an odd conspiracy theory. Brown is alleging that state officials, including the Secretary of State’s office, are devising a plot to deny Brown’s election certification, if he wins, until after health reform passes:

BROWN: The latest development is Senator Kirk, the interim senator which we manipulated senate the succession issue to make sure that we had that 60th vote to kind of ram things through, well he announced today that he’s not resigning and that the Secretary of State thinks he needs to wait until every single ballot is counted and recounted and triply counted, and they’re not going to certify me until after the healthcare debate. Now, you know what that does, that makes me sick to my stomach. [...] We called on her [Martha Coakley] to stand up to the manipulation of another vote in Washington. We’ve called on her tonight to stand up and say ‘no, no, whoever wins, you certify them right away.’

ThinkProgress contacted the Massachusetts Secretary of State office for comment on Brown’s theory that officials are conspiring to refuse to seat him immediately after the election on January 19th. Brian McNiff, a spokesman for the Secretary of State, called Brown’s remarks “nuts.” He then explained that by law, election officials must wait 10 days after the election for military and overseas ballots. Also, by law, an additional five days (totaling 15 after the election) are required for cities and towns to verify and report ballots. Responding to a question about Brown’s conspiracy theory, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) said, “That is the stupidest thing I’ve been asked in a long time. That is insane, the suggestion could only come from a demented right wing source.”

Early this morning Tea Party Express organizers asked for donations to help Brown:

"We are in a fundraising drive so that we can buy as many TV ads supporting Brown as possible," they wrote to supporters.

"We must take action, for if we can pull out a victory, we stop the Democrats dead in their tracks in their effort to secretly ram through their socialistic healthcare plan," they wrote. "That's because Scott Brown wholeheartedly opposes the Democrat's government-run healthcare plan and has made his opposition to it a central part of his campaign."

No matter what happens in that election, the Democratic party already passed something in the Senate, as craptastic as it is, and if there is even a hint that the obviously addle-brained Brown won't join the rest of the Senate to pass anything the House adds to that?

Just like the Christianists, GOP operatives are trying to use the teabagers as an ATM machine for Brown's own political purposes with a blatant disregard to the tea party activists' own stated interests, as crazy as most moderates and the left find some of the teabagers' ideas are.

OOPS! Brown is lying to everyone - Left, Right and Center. And hoping nobody notices until after the elections.

Everything new can and will be passed long before that election is certified. Even if they change some of the stuff in their "conference-not-a-conference". Election is the 19th? It takes a minimum of 15 days after that for the elections to be certified in Mass.. That means certification is into February... That is the law. And assuming no lengthy legal battles like Al Franken had. That means the Senate can vote on the fixes and have the new bill back to the House before either Brown or Coakly ever sees the inside of the Senate.

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Larry Craig and David Vitter — “two United States Senators implicated in extramarital sexual activity” — have named themselves as co-sponsors of S.J. Res. 43, the Marriage Protection Amendment. If passed, the bill would amend the Constitution to declare that marriage “shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.”